Declaration of Indulgence, a declaration or proclamation issued by Charles II. in 1672, professedly to favor the Nonconformists, in giving them liberty to adopt and practise their own methods of worship, which had been curtailed by the Conventicle and Five Mile Acts. Parliament, however, suspecting that its real object was to benefit the Roman Catholics, passed in the following year the Test Act.
Entry from Everybody's Cyclopedia, 1912.